On Burma

The international community (which as Chomsky has pointed out, simply means the US and UK, and subordinated NATO allies) has erupted over the extension of Aung San Suu Kyi's decades-old house arrest. By odd coincidence I've been reading an old John Pilger book named 'Hidden Agendas'. It's nice to bask in the World's Poshest Australian's glow, and magnificently portentous writing. It has also been nice to read about the islands of grotesque despotism that persist, despite the 'international community'. His account of Burma follows the pattern of his account of Cambodia, with well-meaning clichés about the beauty of the landscape, the humility and goodness of the people and so on. At one point, he refers to the deference of someone presumably terrified at the prospect of offending a foreigner during Burma's 'turn to tourism' as proof of an innate generosity. This isn't necessary - noone should have to live under a regime of slave and/or convict labour, in conditions of extreme deprivation, even if they're rude and live in a sequence of slimy caves.

The portrait given of Aung Syn Suu Kyi is more nuanced - having acquired a rare interview, he does the unimaginable and asks difficult questions. Solidarity with Third World oppositional movements often takes on a crude element of hero-worship - Mandela, the Dalai Lama - and it often feels like humbug to criticise this well-meaning projection. Pilger, having laid praise on thick, adds enough nuance to counter the cliché. In particular, he questions her on her proposal for a unity government with her jailers. John Pilger remains one of the world's great journalists, simply for the fact that he's conducted robust, critical interviews with two of the subjects (and my, what subjection!) in Gordon Brown's piss-poor, unsold book 'Courage'. In his greatest film, 'Apartheid Did Not Die', he has an actual argument with Nelson Mandela. It is impossible to imagine Andrew Marr doing the same.

However, what's been interesting about Burma is the issue's proof of how our politicians fall over themselves to criticise regimes in which they have very little interest. There's the simple propaganda argument, often heard around the time of the Iraq War, that Saddam's crimes were equivalent to the crimes of a myriad of other dictators, and thus he didn't deserve toppling. As solid as this argument is, it did lead to people who were opposed to the war saying things like "Well, why don't they sort out Mugabe?!". A narrow focus on human rights violations can lead to strange and contradictory statements - the 'comedian and activist' Mark Thomas wrote an article on Burma which praises, with massive qualification, America and the Conservative Party's stances on Burma. If you find yourself singing the praises of the armers of Indonesia and the bombers of Baghdad, you're missing the point.

The point is that horrors such as those committed by the Burmese junta are perfectly acceptable to major companies, smaller businesses and the 'international community'. Authoritarian capitalism is the norm for most of the world's population, from China to Honduras, and the horrors that the Burmese people suffer are entirely congruent with past and present horrors. The boycott and disinvestment campaign has been very effective, preventing whole American cities and states, and the EU to theoretical non-involvement with the Burmese government. Despite this, the regime persists. Aung Syn Suu Kyi, despite her Courage, will strive for national unity and the injustice that is 'peace and reconciliation'. The only action that will topple it is the action of the Burmese people themselves, battered and enslaved, and the only justice the Burmese people is that which they take in the heat of struggle, to the probable horror of the 'international community'. They have risen, despite their 'peaceloving' 'deference', and will rise again.

Oh, What a Lovely War!

Tomorrow, US troops will 'pullback' from towns and cities in Iraq. Good taste surely dictates that the celebrations will be muted - throwing a giant parade, given the million dead and 2 million displaced, would be quite grotesque (I foolishly searched for an image for this post, using the terms 'Iraq War' - not a clever move). The Iraq War (or 'Iraq 2 - This Time, It's Protracted') is seen, by all other than the most ostrich-like supporters of the invasion, as an unmitigated disaster - the deposition and execution of Saddam being scant consolation for the utter destruction of infrastructure, the creation of a sham 'democracy' and the unleashing of inter-communal violence. All of the main governmental supporters of the war: Bush, Blair and Aznar, are now out of office.

The election of an American President who was opposed to the war, and the 'pullback', are drawing a line under the invasion - continued criticism of the war will henceforth appear to be, if not sour grapes, then an increasingly irrelevant irritant. Of course, US troops remain in Iraq, as will the aircraft that rain fire indiscriminately and the branches of KFC. The message is that it's over - the massage of the message from the pro-war crowd will be "we came with good intentions, but got it wrong. Better luck next time!". They'd prefer not to learn the lessons, as they didn't after Kosovo, as they won't after Afghanistan. It's a shame, as I maintain a sedentary lifestyle, and really hate marching, even against war, but needs must.

One problem for the anti-war movement is film. The director and critic Francois Truffaut argued that it is impossible to make an anti-war film, as film can't fail but make look war look exciting. I've always taken this argument as fact - if we look at Apocalypse Now!, all 'the horror, the horror' is balanced with wide shots of helicopters, Flight of The Valkyries and that. Platoon, despite Oliver Stone's pinko-commie ways, leaves us with a slo-mo death scene that makes the chemical squalor of US conduct in Vietnam seem like the greatest heroism. But the Iraq War, for all the horror it's wrought, has left us with a genuinely anti-war film in the form of Paul Haggis' mesmeric 'In The Valley of Elah'.

'In The Valley of Elah' achieves its stance against the war by not setting its film in Iraq - the battered country is only seen in cameraphone footage, grimly reminiscent of leaked footage of so much atrocity. However, Iraq has come home - the film is set on a sunblasted army base, as disconnected from the US as the troops stationed thousands of miles away. Tommy Lee Jones plays the protagonist, the father of an Iraq veteran, and the narrative takes the form of a police procedural. The heavy lifting of the piece is undertaken by Tommy Lee's face, shown in nearly perpetual close-up, and his face's performance is magnificent. It's been said of the jazz pianist Cecil Taylor that he's capable of playing different tempo, tone and volume on each finger. In 'Elah', Tommy Lee Jones does the same thing with each facial muscle.

The film is remarkable for its portrayal of soldiers as human beings. Despite the millenia old existence of armies, this remains a difficulty (see the film '300' if you don't believe me). Perhaps it's because the things which armies do are beyond human - it's hard to believe that the people who razed Fallujah are of made of flesh like ours. But they are - they drink, they fight, they cry, they grieve and love. In a sane society, we wouldn't need an Armed Forces Day, or a Veterans' Day. We'd simply remove these individuals from the hideous situations in which they are placed, and carry about our business.

In dealing with the aftermath of war, 'In The Valley Of Elah' makes war as unsexy as it should be, and by implication, makes the decision to prosecute wars of choice seem as psychotic as it truly is. The film is problematic in its almost exclusive focus on the suffering of Americans. This is an imbalance that we can presume will exist until Iraq becomes the Las Vegas on the Gulf that we are promised. But in its unflinching portrait of what becomes even of the prosecutors of war, it deserves attention and acclaim.

"Up some jungle, up some tree": Kala, Fame and Poverty, or how I learned to stop laughing and love M.I.A. part 2.

M.I.A. has described the difference between Arular, her first album, and Kala, her second, as the difference between masculine and feminine - the first being made to honour her father, the second, her mother. In fact, the difference between the two is the difference between bad music and good music. While Arular is intriguing - lyrically dense, sporadically melodic, politically bracing - Kala is an unironic joy, over-stuffed with melody, sharply shifting rhythms and laugh-out loud lyrics. The album shimmers with the unheard opinions and wasted potential of the several billion people who live in dire poverty (a guess-timate based on the billion that live in slums - call me old fashioned, but if where you live is called a slum, you're pretty poor in my book). It hits like we can imagine a gap-year does.

Which makes the choice of 'Paper Planes' as the calling-card single for this album absolutely inexplicable. The song is still wonderful, and it being a hit is perhaps the greatest thing to occur in the hundred-odd years of electronically recorded music. But nevertheless, it's atypical of the album - stable, even sedate. It is, maybe, a fitting end to the album, energetic and colourful - it serves as Monday morning to the album's weekend. Its best lyric is "Sometimes I sing sitting on trains/Every stop I get people clocking my game". Paired with the New York backdrop of the video, this conjours the image of the people that stand out, to terrifying effect, on mass transit systems - the insane, the factor of risk that must be present when millions of people co-exist and commute.

Hearing the first track (the dreadfully titled 'Bamboo Banger'), you notice significant continuity with Arular. We're back in Galang territory, the sparse arrangement, the monotone delivery, the air of threat. But the break comes at 1.57 (in the linked video), when we hear a shrill sample - from then on, the album is awash with voices, through the tropical traffic jam of 'Boyz' to the wonderful novelty of 'Mango Pickle Down River'. M.I.A.'s vocal delivery is hugely improved, with the lyrics thankfully comprehensible, and she even sings, to great effect, on 'Jimmy'.

With Kala, M.I.A. filled the nonsense position to which she was appointed by critics at the time of her first album - 'The Voice of the Developing World'. The simple listing of place names is deployed to this effect, with the album opener giving a 'shout-out' to Angola, Burma, Ghana, India, Somalia and Sri Lanka. That's one song. As tiresome as this sounds, she's clever enough to subvert this later. Jimmy - the only love song she's ever recorded - begins "When you go/Rwanda, Congo/Take me on your genocide tour/Take me on a truck to Darfur". Here, she resembles a Tamil Peter Kay - cataloguing facts for comic effect. In effect, she's going "Remember genocide, yeah? Remember genocide, when you were a kid?".

On the stunning 'Hussel', she again front-loads her best joke: "We do it cheap/Save our money in a heap/Send it home and make them study/Fixing teeth". It's worth stepping back and marvelling at this - over Hoover synths, with clattering percussion, someone is rapping about remittances. Not just here, but particularly here, a whole sequence of transactions, a whole way of living, an immigrant experience, that falls under the radar for most, is being recorded, and being funky.

M.I.A.'s career is currently at a high-point, with serendipity intervening to construct another great work of art in the same mould as her work - the justly acclaimed Slumdog Millionaire - that raised her profile even further through her soundtrack work. Kala is an album of such absurd density and vibrancy, that it's hard to imagine an improvement upon it, but if it is improved upon, it will probably destroy stereos on contact.

"You will drip rubies"

Part of the oddity of Red Nose Day is that, between the pallid comedy and gesticulating celebrities, there are appeals on behalf of those going through Capitalism's people mincing machine. The millions suffering malnutrition and woefully inadequately healthcare in the developing world are given their moment in the sun, between David Walliams dressed as a lady and newsreaders swearing. Communities who've suffered the sharp end of capitalism in our comparatively wealthy society are patted on the back and given some cash, then Adele sings one of her many 'hits'. As Gramsci said, the fact that people starve when there's no need should be of some importance, and certainly more importance than one day every however-many years affords it. With this in mind, I feel that the musical Sweeney Todd deserves further attention.



Most people (those of us who haven't done time in community theatre) have access to Sweeney Todd through Tim Burton's relatively successful recent film version. Burton's film is wonderful, building the Victorian London of myth, and making the correct decision to cast actors instead of singers. The central performances are great, with Johnny Depp managing to convey the absolute destruction of the title character's sanity, and his absolute numbness at the world around him better than you would expect from a man who's spent a large part of the last decade doing a rubbish Keith Richards impression for a living. Helena Bonham-Carter is absolutely endearing as Mrs. Lovett, making the audience sympathise sincerely with a character complicit in serial killing. The other actors are of musicals stock, and manage to varying degrees of success - I felt the urge to punch the actor playing the role of Anthony hard in the back of the head, whereas the boy playing the role of Toby sings and acts absurdly well for someone who's younger than some working socks.

I've avoided musicals, although 'South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut' is unaccountably my favourite film. The songs are too catchy, even when they're rubbish, the acting is generally poor (these people are usually singers) and they're always too long. However, comedy and music being my two favourite things, I've started to find them irresistable. My entry point (after South Park) was Brecht and Weill's Threepenny Opera, which is hilarious in a way that David Walliams couldn't even concieve - although you could argue his inexplicable performance as an incontinent woman in Little Britain series 3 derives chuckles from the horror of every day life, and the inhumanity of man to man (or, in Walliams' case, the inhumanity of himself to an imaginary old woman). Although Brecht was inarguably of the left, the Threepenny Opera shows the working class or dispossessed as either victims or bastards.


'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street' fits the description 'left musical' better than the Threepenny Opera. It's more 'musicalish' than the Threepenny Opera, although, in fairness, I'm too ignorant to know whether musicals were a thing when the Threepenny Opera was written. Class antagonism runs through Sweeney Todd, as it does society, and gets expressed in the most brutal terms - there are two kinds of people, "there's the one they put in his proper place, and the one with his foot in the other one's face", and "the history of the world...is those below serving those up above".

The central metaphor is (sarcastic SPOILER ALERT!!) of a people mincing machine - Sweeney Todd kills his patrons and Mrs. Lovett makes them into pies. It's easy to forget, in these times, when our leaders declare their ethical foreign policies and boast of the sustainability of their economic models, just how much blood oiled and still oils the cogs of capital during industrial revolutions. The hideous indignities that left our country such a stable and prosperous place are wheeled out in turn. Child labour, slavery (in the form of the workhouse), deportation, hanging - all there, and what's more, there's Johnny Depp! The metaphor is hammered home - looking around London, Todd hears the sound "of man devouring man", and declares it the way of the world. Mrs. Lovett, as a small business woman, is nearly ruined by conscientiousness and legality, and only when she decides to embrace violence, do her pies sell.

Of course, these facts remain. While profit rather than need drives production, those below will serve those up above, and man will devour man. When faced with the philanthropic outreaches of the very rich, however well intentioned, we must remember that behind those distended stomachs are people - Presidents for Life, oil barons and associated bastards, whose bellies are equally distended through greed. Sweeney Todd is not going to end this injustice, but it has undoubtably given us some great tunes to hum while we imagine what we could and should do to end it.